Block Videos

[mistermoonlight]

We've had a request from a member to pass along this concern, and I told him I would, even though everything I know about the web tells me that things are probably going in the opposite direction from what he would like:

I wish we could block videos. One reason is that if a thread has a lot of videos on it, my Internet is so slow that more than likely I can read the posts themselves, but they might not come up. For a long time there are empty squares where the videos will go. It has been my experience that sometimes, even with fast Internet, what I actually want doesn't show up until last and it can be a long wait

 

[Stinky666]

Nov 27, 2012 17:45:29 GMT -8 mistermoonlight said:

We've had a request from a member to pass along this concern, and I told him I would, even though everything I know about the web tells me that things are going in the opposite direction from what he would like:

I wish we could block videos. One reason is that if a thread has a lot of videos on it, my Internet is so slow that more than likely I can read the posts themselves, but they might not come up. For a long time there are empty squares where the videos will go. It has been my experience that sometimes, even with fast Internet, what I actually want doesn't show up until last and it can be a long wait

 

Personally I think this is a great idea. I have what I'd consider fast internet, or reasonable at least, and I totally agree with your member.

[mistermoonlight]

Thanks. I'll be sure to tell him about that.

[Ryan Roos]

A video displaying in a post is the equivalent of an image displaying as far as load goes. This only changes if you try to play the video, then it will start loading a lot of data. If your member has a slow internet connection or a slow computer we recommend upgrading to a newer browser. Chrome for example is great on slower computers for processing the internet (and v5).

We won't be adding a way to disable videos. As an admin you can make a rule, or use the censored words to break video tags even. It's up to you to manage videos if they're an issue.

[blueshead]

Would using a flash blocker in your browser make any difference at all?

[Patrick [ASE]]

Nov 28, 2012 9:29:29 GMT -8 blueshead said:

Would using a flash blocker in your browser make any difference at all?

That may be a pain if you wanted to genuinely view a vid, you'd have to turn it on and off.

[blueshead]

Nov 28, 2012 10:50:22 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

Nov 28, 2012 9:29:29 GMT -8 blueshead said:

Would using a flash blocker in your browser make any difference at all?

That may be a pain if you wanted to genuinely view a vid, you'd have to turn it on and off.

As members would also have to do if they are allowed to block videos on the board and wanted to watch one..  seems about the same..

[Patrick [ASE]]

I would assume the block video would prevent embedding, but it would show as a link for you to view on YT or whatever, but if you block using browser settings, YT won't work at all

[Shrike]

Nov 28, 2012 11:49:03 GMT -8 Patrick [ASE] said:

I would assume the block video would prevent embedding, but it would show as a link for you to view on YT or whatever, but if you block using browser settings, YT won't work at all

I'd be very surprised if such plugin blockers didn't have an exception/whitelist like most ad-blockers do. I use the permissions in Chrome to set plugins to be blocked unless I've specify otherwise and even then, it just shows a placeholder that you can click to enable the plugin content.

It's probably also worth pointing out that video embeds (or at least for YouTube) seem to be done by having an iframe which then has the video loaded inside it. The connection to this embedded page is probably what causes the delay as, like Ryan said, only a single frame is shown unless you start the video and this all has about the same filesize as my avatar.